Speak to your phone in Azerbaijani
By Nigar Orujova
Azerbaijanis will soon have an opportunity to speak to their phones in their mother language.
Azerbaijani software developer Dilmanc company has created an analogue of the personal intelligent assistant Siri, said Abulfat Fatullayev, a project manager at Dilmanc. The project has been submitted to the Azerbaijani Ministry of Labour and Social Protection.
Useful features of the app include the opportunity to ask questions on topics of interest, for instance, the weather forecast or information on traffic jams.
The users will hear a response in the Azerbaijani language. Moreover, the personal assistant will be able to open websites, and read any text loudly for the users.
The system will also allow to manage the smartphone with voice commands that can be useful in typing and sending SMS. In addition, the voice commands will be able to select the recipient from the phone book of the smartphone.
The app is expected to be used first by the devices running on the Android system, and then get adapted to other operating systems.
Moreover, the app will help people with health problem to use high technologies for communication.
"As you know, Azerbaijan has joined the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities,” Fatullayev said. “The Convention encourages developing conditions for people with disabilities to explore their creative and intellectual potential. Last but not least, it calls to simplify their access to ICT.”
The analogue of personal intelligent assistant developed by Dilmanc will allow people with disabilities to freely use means of communication, for example get answers to their questions, the project manager stressed.
The program seems to be popular in the country, where the mobile phones penetration stands at 110 percent.
Dilmanc is a state project aimed to develop next-generation technologies for Azerbaijani and Turkic languages, which include language technologies, information retrieval, and machine learning, etc.
The project's first product - Dilmanc translation system has been downloaded more than 750,000 times.
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Nigar Orujova is AzerNews’s staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @o_nigar
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